Chapter 701: Dig two graves
“Annie went…under the…the thing! Into the mist!”
Mason cycled through his shots, then turned to see Blake pointing at Doom’s floating cloud chariot with great enthusiasm. After ‘now what’, he had a few thoughts:
One: he finally had this God damn air lord on the ropes and why didn’t the universe want him to kill it? Two: Annie was still fucking crazy. Three: after some tests, he had no idea how to kill and/or stop Yalor’s champion.
He’d hit it with a shitload of arrows and didn’t get the feeling he was meaningfully hurting it. He scanned it from head to toe and found nothing like ‘vitals’. He blasted it with Solar Wrath, which basically just gave it a sun tan. Though to be fair he hadn't cranked the mana to eleven. Maybe going into that mist was the way. He didn’t have any better ideas.
“Finish the air lord,” he said with a sigh, then dove.
Low flyers and shooters all scattered in terror. Some of his people were shouting, and he saw the champion was dangerously close to them. But he had to trust them to hold or withdraw if needed. In fact, he did trust them.
He entered the champion’s aura and hit the ground, seeing his defences flare up and start tangling with whatever effects were swamping him. But he trusted them, too, and wasted no time, running straight under the demon, prepared for anything and everything.
The light vanished, then clicked into a dull grey in his vision as Abyssal Antagonist started up. It somehow wasn’t ‘natural’ terrain, and all his powers lost their faint green glow. Apex Predator warned it couldn’t do anything. Transformation complained about reduced effect. He felt slightly ill but otherwise not like he was getting his soul sucked out.
All things considered, not so bad.
He paced into the mist with extended Claws, hearing moans and screaming voices as if far away. Movement at the edges of his vision kept turning his head, only to find more barren rock. A voice whispered in his mind, old and rasping as it moved from a hiss to a kind of snake-like rattle that made Mason’s spine tingle.
You shouldn’t have come, son of Cerebus. The gods cannot see me here.
Two orbs opened in the dark. They were so black they were like holes in a night sky. A towering form framed them in silhouette, with broad shoulders and visible horns. For just a moment, Mason thought it was Cerebus.
As it emerged more fully, it did look alarmingly similar. But where the horned god was like a mammal covered in fur, this thing was reptilian. It had a snake's face, and dead, solid eyes. It also had no sign of a beating heart.
A forked tongue flicked from the long line of its mouth. A scorpion-like tail rose up behind it, and its pincer hands snapped. System text crackled and blurred in Mason’s vision.
[New Objective: Error. Unable to identify. Re-analyzing system event. Error. Escalating.]
That...didn’t seem good. Was this the real ‘Doom’? Or some kind of...sub-system interference? Mason hadn’t seen anything like this in his dreams. Whatever the thing was, it charged forward as a blur. Apparently it wasn’t much of a talker.
He let violent instinct take over. He dodged and slashed without thought, Honor Blades jabbing from two angles. The snake-scorpion-man champion ignored them and reached for his throat with a pincer.
He tried to deflect the arm and...barely moved it. Pure reflex saved him, the pincer snapping and scraping his furred flesh. The tail dove down so fast it whistled.
Mason immediately accepted this thing was too fast and strong to push away, and dodged. The pincers and tail-spike chased, snapping and jabbing again and again no matter how he moved.
In only a few seconds, he accepted two more facts: it had longer reach than him. And it was faster than him. Somehow it was also so dense he could barely stop its limbs.
What followed wasn’t panic. Mason’s mind was just struggling for a solution. It wasn’t until Duality of Strength gave its first tick that he took a real breath.
Maybe he could get equally strong and dense. If he lived long enough. Was the tail poisoned? Very likely. But then killing Mason with poison was a tall order. All he had to do was keep away from those awful pincers, get stronger and harder without losing speed, and start stacking Exploiting Strikes.
Simple, right?
If he could actually get the time to counter-attack. Which was a pretty difficult task considering every second was literally spent trying not to…
The tail spike caught his quad as he pulled back. It hammered down so hard he heard his thigh bone crack, the point vanishing entirely into his leg. The pain was bad. Far worse than it should have been.
[Poison detected: Error. Unable to identify. Re-analyzing. Error. Escalating.]
Mason kept moving. He ignored the damage, activating Aspect of the Cheetah to try and keep ahead and give his leg time to heal. The creature didn’t slow down. It just kept snapping and trying to skewer him or cut his throat, letting his Honor Blades strike as they pleased. He realized they were bouncing off the thing’s flesh with barely more than scratches. That wasn’t so good, either.
It was time for every possible trick. He activated his dispel. It flat out failed to activate. He tried to create nature ground. ‘Currently unavailable’. There was no time for spells. He could hardly think let alone stamp runes. It was time to get the fuck out of there and come up with a new plan.
“Yalor!”
Red eyes appeared in the mist as something came running. Mason had no idea if it was friend or foe, but he was a bit busy trying not to die. Also, what? Was he actually fighting…a god? Wasn’t being on the prime against their bullshit rules? Maybe shouting the god’s name was just dramatic license.
Fiery wings opened as the red eyes came closer. Mason realized it was Annie in her insane, temporary form. Or at least he hoped it was. He soon recognized her axe with relief, trying to figure out how to even make use of her. He seriously doubted they could take this thing, even together. Not here where it was strong. They had to get it out, to gang up on it.
“I’ve waited three hundred years,” said Annie in her strange, combined voice, chest heaving. “You’ll pay for what you did to this world. And to me.”
The demon stopped long enough to look at its new foe. Those awful eyes took her in coldly. Then it just stepped back with its long, three-toed feet to face them both.
“I don’t even know who you are.”
Annie and Friend seemed pretty mad about that.
“My name. Is Arminius.”
They came running with axe and dagger, glowing with flame as they attacked. Mason was kind of tempted to get out while he could. Not because he was afraid, but because he actually wanted to succeed.
But he couldn’t just leave Annie there. Maybe with a distraction he could at least build some Exploiting Strikes…
He summoned his bow and started feeding arrows into the thing’s side and back, careful with his shots. Which was to say still shooting at an insanely fast rate.
Two stacks. Three. Four. He risked a Power Shot and grinned as the force sent a tremble of flesh down the demon’s powerful leg.
Annie was doing…shockingly well. She was actually deflecting that tail with her knife, using her giant axe to keep the demon back in brutal swipes. Mason’s leg was healing slow, but it was healing.
He was considering running in to start raking his Claws down the thing’s back when it suddenly charged in past an axe-swing, extended an arm at impossible speed, and took Annie’s transformed head with a single snap of its pincer.
The fiery form collapsed like a puppet without strings.
Mason activated his Stag challenge as he sprinted in, but it did nothing. The demon turned and fought him with the same dead eyes, without pressing the attack, holding back his claws and continuing to ignore his Honor Blades.
Annie transformed back to her normal form on the ground. She rolled away, slicing with her axe and trying to keep her feet. Mason knew it was happening before it happened. The demon was waiting.
It rushed and took her swing as it reached for her throat, just as it had before. Her axe slammed into its side with flare of sparks, but no real effect. It caught her, just like that. She met Mason’s eyes, looking almost…apologetic, before the demon cut through most of her neck, and tossed her flying away like scrap.
Mason tried to heal her. But he’d seen the wound. After a few seconds of fighting, he watched in horror as Annie’s corpse sunk into the ground, dead hands pulling her in, axe sinking into the muck.
“She will rot in the abyss until she is broken," said the demon, looking entirely unstrained as they fought. "She will serve me in the next game.”
The ruthless part of Mason's brain was fully in charge now, and he felt nothing. He stuck to his plan. He reduced his weight with his boots to keep his speed as Duality of Strength re-formed him, stronger, denser by the second. He managed a few Exploiting Strikes. He dodged. He deflected as best he could.
The next tail-strike hit him in the arm, just above his Sleeve. His poison-warning flared and errored, just as before.
The pincers he could deal with. The thing was strong and fast beyond reason, but it had a body that could only move in so many directions and Mason could react. But that fucking tail. It weaved and hid until it struck. It was long and flexible and could whip around and…
It reached way up, and dove around to hit him in the back. Later, it straight jabbed his chest. His shoulder. He wasn’t healing fast enough.
Every blow seemed to weaken his regeneration more and more. He was getting slower, his body too damaged. He had to get out. But he wasn’t even sure which way to go, concerned the mist would somehow keep him locked inside. And it was all he could do to keep those pincers away, or he’d be on the ground like Annie.
But then he didn't truly fight alone. Not for a long time.
He didn’t turn to look at the movement behind him when it came. Another inhumanly fast creature, as sneaky as you please. It struck him hard and didn’t slow down. He grunted and grabbed for his life as the plane-walking Stag raced him out of the mist.